There had been attacks by serbian police in the northern town of subotica, very close to the hungarian border, on a camp of refugees, mainly from pakistan, afghanistan and tunesia. These people are waiting to cross over to the Schengen-zone, many have tried but were thrown back by the hungarian border guards. Similair to bulgaria, fascist and nationalist tensions are rising in the context of anti-immigration violence. The video about the case in subotica is mainly in English, only in the beginning some hungarian only:

The serbian media did not report in that sense about the case. b92 (the most liberal media in serbia) is only reporting that the serbian police has started an action against smuglers of ilegal asylum-seekers, and that they arrested 14 of these smugglers that were smuggling for money people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia and Tunisia… And that this actions took place, among other places, in Subotica…

There is also an article now on serbian leftliberal portal e-novine about the case:

the title means: “The police is racketeering and beating asylum seekers” .. The text is a pretty harsh critique of the serbian government, and nationalism. They are saying how the whole anti-immigrant histeria we saw in last weeks is hipocritical, because we are suppose to belive how everyone is threaten by the assylum seekers, when the truth is that they are the ones who are suffering. They also say that the police who was yesterday commended by the minister of interior for the arrest of smugglers of immigrants are probably the very same people who were racketeering and beating up these people.

These couple of weeks we saw first anti-immigrant protests in Serbia, organized by local people in two Serbian cities, and joined by fascists, as locals say.

The anti-immigrant protests in Serbia started when an afghan man was accused of raping a woman in the small town of Banja Koviljaca (some 6000 people live there). There is a center for asylum seekers there, but this is small center (they have capacity for 80 people!) and they say that there is around 2500 asylum seekers in that town now. The protest was attended by some 2000 local people. They also started not allowing their kids to go to school. Then the government announced they will try and find an alternative place for the immigrants, in some of the abandoned army barracks in some other Serbian city. In one of the towns that was mentioned, Aleksinac, there was also an anti-immigrant protest. And a fascist group Nashi threatened that they will block the barracks in Ruma if the government decides that this will be the new place for asylum seekers.

This is from the protest in Banja Koviljaca, the sign says “who is next?”

It would be wrong to focus just on the situation in the balkan countries to understand the context of anti-immigration tendency. The whole concept of shengen and militarisation by the western european countries is escalating these racist tendencies, as they do not respect freedom of movement, but instead get stronger and intense border controlls so that the neighbouring countries face more and more people without perspective stucked there on their way to the shengen countries.

The only solution is a borderless antiracist solidarity against fortress europe and all the institutions of seperation and controll.